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Hasn't that darn election been held yet? For our latest roundtable, we dove into the uncharted waters of presidential politics with federal IT power players John Barrass, COO of STG, Inc.; Champ Mitchell, Chairman of Network Solutions; and Paul Cofoni, CEO of CACI, over a terrific lunch at McCormick & Schmick's in Reston.

Paul and Champ (left) and John (second from right) are joined by our great sponsors John Chierichella of law firm Sheppard Mullin and Bob Shue of commercial real estate giant Jones Lang LaSalle.

Bisnow:

The hot issue is the Presidential election and how it'll affect federal businesses, so what's the hot answer?

Paul:

There is no answer, which makes it the perfect question.

Bob:

The cute answer is it depends. If the Democrats win, Montgomery County will benefit because of the life sciences firms headquartered there. If the Republicans win, it will benefit Fairfax County because of the plethora of defense contractors. In other words: guns, tanks and military procurement-the death sciences.

Bisnow:

Are you doing formal things to prepare for alternatives or are you sitting and waiting?

Paul:

We have a strategy, but there's a certain proportion of business that's independent of who's elected. For example, the global threat of terrorism isn't going away. We think this is the fight for the next two or three generations of Americans, so a lot of our current strategy is to expand into that area.

Paul listening to Champ make a point. Champ turned over the CEO position at Network Solutions about two months ago, but remains Chairman of the company with its four million customers, most on the small business side.

Bisnow:

On Iraq, the candidates have quite different policies. Are you planning different scenarios accordingly?

John B:

We haven't changed, because we think the strategy we're on is independent of who's elected. The first Gulf War took a better part of a year and a half to exit and there wasn't a lot of threat to the war fighters. What we've got now is completely different. The stability level isn't there. You could decide to leave tomorrow morning and wouldn't see a fundamental change for years.

Champ:

Does anybody think regardless of who is elected there's going to be some major change in the short term? We've gotten ourselves into a situation where if Obama is elected tomorrow it's going to be difficult to disengage quickly because of the instability and danger to our people. Do any of you see a scenario where we just pull out of Iraq?

John B:

No.

Paul:

No.

John B:

Before we can pull out, we need to solve problems in Afghanistan that are the same as they were in Bosnia, Somalia and the first Gulf War. There are two major problems left in information sharing and multilevel security. Everything else you can throw money at.

"To be or not to be." Bob is a lawyer not an actor, but a broker. His firm handles real estate for a number of defense contractors including Lockheed Martin, CSC and SI International.

John C:

It's going to be difficult for a new president to change the systems that have planned and are on the road to full acquisition. They're not going to cancel ajoint strike fighter because of a Democratic win. They're not going to cancel an aircraft carrier. They may stretch them out a little bit, but the hardware is going to continue to be bought. I don't even care how big the margin of victory might be for Obama. He's not going to declare a war on the military and try to de-scope their ability to do the mission.

SOCIAL MEDIA SCENESTERS

We hit Georgetown's hot lounge Mate this week for an invite-only cocktail party hosted by Gratis Internet's Gordon Peters, Buddy Media's Michael Lazerow, Social Times' Nick O'Neill, and Living Social's Tim O'Shaughnessy. Getting the "social" theme yet? They were in DC for "Graphing Social Patterns," where the likes of Facebook, Bebo, and MySpace share tips on big questions like: How do we actually make money off social media? Gordon's shirt features a logo for Social Cash, but it's no wardrobe malfunction. He's the VP of the new company, launched yesterday, and says their "crazy advertising magic" will make it the go-to site for monetizing social networks.For the past eight months the secret project was code named Project Panther. Srsly.

David Stegon is Bisnow's tech guru. Contact him with story ideas at David@Bisnow.com or 703-674-7718.

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